I rewatched Lord of the Rings the other day and you know what I really appreciate?
The men are so tender.
They cry, and kiss each other’s foreheads, and hug, and call each other ‘my friend’ and ‘my dear’; they’re respectful to women and faithful to their partners; they have banter without being creepy and sleazy, and literally none of that stops them from being considered “manly”.
also consider: LOTR but hobbits have Tapeta Lucidum
Boromir gets the fright of his life their first night on the road
Boromir: *glances over his shoulder* ??!!!!???!!
Hobbits:
Hobbits: what
i will never get over that you used an image of raccoons for this purpose because it is incredibly accurate
LOTR au but instead of hobbits literally raccoons
Gandalf: well this raccoon found the ring and has been carrying it around. unfortunately we can’t take it off him or he gets very bite-y. so I figure, the raccoon is the ringbearer now
Elrond: what are those other three raccoons doing here
Gandalf: he brought his buddies. I call this one ‘Merry’
Aragorn: *watching Frodo & Sam scamper off in the direction of Mordor* our hopes lie with those raccoons now
Legolas: do they… know where they are going
Aragorn: I sure hope so
Faramir: father why is this raccoon in the livery of the citadel
Denethor: haha doesn’t he look precious
Elfhelm: Dernhelm, is that a raccoon in your bag?
Dernhelm: *sweating nervously* Uh no, sir.
Eowyn, later: And I said no, you know, like a liar.
Denethor: WHY did you let a raccoon go off with the Ring??
Faramir: ….it just seemed like the right thing to do
Gandalf: he scratched you up real good huh
Faramir: ……………gouged my FUCKING arm and bit me on my face
Witch King: no living man can kill me – AUGH FUCK, RACCOON, RACCOON ON MY LEG ARGHHHH
Eowyn: *stab*
Wraiths break into the room at the prancing pony: *UnHoLy ScReEcHiNg*
Trash Panda Hobbits:
Wraiths: Oh, what the fuck, whAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!
Treebeard: Baroom, humm, where are my small, impatient friends?
Merry and Pippin:
Don’t go where I can’t follow, Mr. Frodo.
~~~~~~The Hobbit interlude~~~~~~
Thorin:
You’re the burgular.Go on and…burgle something! Bilbo:
Saruman: Well since some fucking TREES took over Isengard I guess I’ll take over The Shire. Farmer Maggot and ever other Halfling down to the Sacksville-Bagginses:
J. R. R. Tolkien on escapism in “The Lord of the Rings” (x)
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?…If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
tbh nothing is weirder to me than manly grimdark dudebro lord of the rings bc it’s just??? the epitome of light and love to me???? no narrative embodies hope and gentleness and healing like lotr does why must you insist on talking to me about badass aragorn vs. useless frodo. that’s not the point brad
I feel like this is also why so many of the post-LOTR Tolkien ripoffs are so terrible! It’s people pulling from Tolkien when they fundamentally don’t understand what makes Tolkien work. You get all these stories written by people who don’t think Frodo was worthy of his plotline and so they give it to their Aragorn expy instead, and it’s dull and boring and totally lacks the themes and the heart that make LOTR an important, enduring story.
when Aragorn shows up in Gondor no one cares who he is until he gets to the Houses of Healing, because the proof of true kingship is not being able to fight real good, it’s having “the hands of a healer”
so Aragorn calls his friends back from the darkness with little more than a gentle touch and a loving voice (and some plants, but it’s pretty clear that the plants alone aren’t enough) and that’s when the rumors spread through Gondor that the King has returned because the love of a king has this great power
like… that’s the big moment. washing his friends’ wounds and telling them they’re going to be okay. this is not macho! it’s not badass! I mean… in a way it’s actually really fucking badass that someone can get stabbed by a knife made of evil and Aragorn doesn’t even have to raise his voice when he says “not today,” but it’s not, like, standard fantasy badass.
Tolkien lived through a war. War is not entertaining and epic, it’s horrifying and terrible. That’s why all the climatic moments of LOTR aren’t battles, but decisions of love: Sam going back for Frodo, Bilbo giving Bard the Arkenstone, Aragorn healing Merry and Eowyn…
Where modern fantasy falls short is they think a war setting is the key to Tolkien’s success, so they describe warrior-man and the gorey, rapey, traumatizing things he does/sees (looking at u, SOIAF). But it’s not about fighting the war, it’s about living through it and loving despite it. Bilbo Baggins slept through his battles, Frodo and Sam (arguably, the main heroes) never fought or killed, a woman & hobbit defeated the witch-king out of love for their lord, not for power or fame. LOTR isn’t a story of war bc Tolkien had already seen that, it’s the story of hope.
real talk why do so many fantasy universes think giant spiders are necessary
The sad part is there’s a decent chance a large proportion of them can be blamed on one spider.
The tarantula that bit JRR Tolkien as a child.
He swore he didn’t have a spider phobia and the experience had nothing to do with the man-eating giant spiders in The Hobbit, the even more giant and even more man-eating spider in Lord of the Rings, or the unholy eldritch spider from outside creation that plunged the world into darkness and made literal Satan scream like a little kid in the Silmarillion. Very few people believe him.
Given LotR’s influence in the fantasy genre, there is a high probability that tarantula is the progenitor of even more fictional spiders than Ungoliant was.
wow fuck that one tarantula
“fantasy universes have too many spiders” factoid actually just statistical error. Georgs Spider, who bit JRR Tolkein & is to blame for menacing over 10,000 fantasy universes, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
You could make a fantasy universe giant spider who’s nice and friendly. Nothing’s stopping you.
Update: Sauron is not afraid of hobbits. He was unaware that hobbits existed up until very recently. he literally did not have time to be afraid of them, they went from a 0 to 100 threat level in twenty seconds. There he was, minding his own business worrying about the usual Elves and Men when suddenly these kids are on his lawn and now he’s dead, like just;
What did— who–
did I just get one-shotted by an infant how is this occurring
Honestly I have to love this whole thought process that the Fellowship must have cultivated in Sauron, like…
“These children have found the Ring! But they’re taking it to the elves, of course. I will simply have to catch them on the way.”
“Well, the elves are still not to be trifled with, it seems. It looks as though they have a group of intrepid heroes, how cute! Wait, who’s leading them? Aw, hell.”
“OKAY! Olorin’s out of the way, and now I can finally kill them all and reclaim the- OH DAMMIT, IT’S IN LOTHLORIEN.”
“Well, okay. They’ve taken it onward. Curunir says one of the halflings is still carrying the ring, so he’s going to capture them and we’ll see how this develops. Thankfully Olorin’s still out of the picture and their little group just shattered into pieces, so that’s one less thing to worry about.”
“Aaaaaand Curunir shat the bed. Excellent. Trees, who would have thought? Okay, so we’re back to plan A: conquer Gondor, because if the Ring’s going to be anywhere, it’ll be there.”
“Wait, who’s on the– Isildur’s WHAT? Ohhhh. Ohohoho. Oh now everything makes sense. Isildur’s Heir is back, and he’s here being all prideful again. That’s fine. Really. I’ll just crush him and his kingdom, and then nobody can stop me!”
“WHAT? FUCKING WHAT? THEY SENT HIM BACK? Ugh, alright, alright, I’m cool, I’m fine. He’s still got that stupid wizard costume on, and I’m still stronger than he ever was. It’s not like he can come toe to toe with me, even if he does have an army behind him. This’ll be fine.”
“They’re… actually marching on the Black Gate? Sweet lord, I didn’t think they’d actually do it! This is perfect, everyone’s right here! Olorin, the human princeling, most of the remaining fighting forces of Men, all I have to do is kill them now and– Wait. Someone just put on the Ring. Someone just– That’s a halfling. They’re inside the mouNTAIN OH GOD NAZGUL GO GO G–”
…aaaaaand curtain.
you can laugh but that is literally what happened
This is the single best brief summary I have ever seen of the entire point of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Christopher Tolkien explains why his father, JRR Tolkien, wrote down “The Hobbit” in the first place, when it was originally intended to be an oral bedtime story for his children.
(found in the forward to The Hobbit Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1987)
So (according to the concept art book) as the Fellowship travels deeper into Middle Earth, the places they pass through become inspired by progressively older periods of history. The farther along you are in the story, the more ancient the design influences
We begin in The Shire: which feels so familiar because, with its tea-kettles and cozy fireplaces, it’s inspired by the relatively recent era of rural England in the 1800s
But when we leave Hobbiton, we also leave that familiar 1800s-England aesthetic behind and start going farther back in time.
Bree is based on late 1600s English architecture
Rohan is even farther back, based on old anglo-saxon era architecture (400s-700s? ce)
Gondor is way back, and no longer the familiar English or Anglo-Saxon: its design comes from classical Greek and Roman architecture
And far far FAR back is Mordor. It’s a land of tents and huts: prehistoric, primitive, primeval. Cavemen times
And the heart of Mordor is a barren lifeless hellscape of volcanic rock…like a relic from the ages when the world was still being formed, and life didn’t yet exist
And then they finally reach Mount Doom, which one artist described as
“where the ring was made, which represents, in a sense, the moment of creation itself”
I’ve watched the movies a few times and love them so much so I can’t believe I actually missed this!
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